Report: Fix children’s detention centers

Updated 12:45 am, Thursday, July 23, 2015

Workers in the state’s maximum-security juvenile jail are grabbing troubled kids in chokeholds, body slamming them on concrete floors and neglecting them in seclusion to the point of suicide, according to a scathing new report from the Office of the Child Advocate.

The study finds that between June 2014 and February, there were more than 24 acts of children attempting to injure or kill themselves in the two Middletown facilities operated by the state Department of Children and Families. In the 12-month period ending July 1, there were at least 532 cases of physical restraints and 134 incidents where handcuffs or shackles were used on children.

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State Child Advocate Sarah Healy Eagan said Wednesday that DCF employees have come forward to report instances of abuse.

“It’s about kids who need mental-health treatment in a correctional environment,” she said in a conference call with reporters. “It continues to siphon tens of millions of dollars of public money for a program that has never succeeded in its purpose. The report is not an indictment of individuals who work in the facility. Right now, there are real kids in state-run correction programs at a high risk for self-injury, and that has to be addressed.”

The 68-page report includes several case studies of anonymous children, including one 14-year-old boy still confined there who has been a victim of multiple cases of abuse, including a body slam from a staff member and an illegal chokehold.

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At a glance

Recommended areas for improvement include:

More effective crisis management and treatment for youth who have serious behavioral health needs.

Reduction in the use of restraints and seclusion.

More time in educational and rehabilitative programming.

Improved suicide prevention.

“Roberto,” a 16-year-old boy with attention-deficit and post-traumatic stress disorders, was incarcerated for a fourth time at the training school last April. While described as likable, the teen also displayed psychotic episodes that resulted in numerous confrontations with staff, lengthy seclusions and illegal face-down restraints.

Urgent steps needed

The report culminates a year-and-a-half-long whistle-blower investigation and underscores the need for better employee training at the troubled 150-bed Connecticut Juvenile Training School and the nearby Pueblo Girls Unit, occupied by about a half dozen youths aged 12 to 20 at Riverview State Hospital. It costs the state about $750 per child, per day to run the facilities, which share some of the 250 staff members, Eagan said.

The report recommends “urgent steps” to fix shortcomings, including the eventual closure of the $57 million facility that was built under the administration of John G. Rowland, the disgraced former governor and that now costs $32 million a year to operate. The facility was the center of the corruption scandal that rocked his administration 11 years ago, when federal investigators found that workers from the New Britain-based Tomasso Group performed improvements on Rowland’s weekend home after getting steered to the fast-tracked contract.

Most kids in the two units, which feature razor wire and isolation cells, are from the state’s major cities and have special education needs, psychiatric disorders and histories of neglect, abuse and trauma. They are sent there by the juvenile justice system for a variety of infractions, from shoplifting to running away, burglary and third-degree assault. But many others are sent because they are abused in their homes and have nowhere else to go.

Youths accused of violent crimes are generally diverted to the adult-justice system. There are currently about 80 boys — mostly black and Hispanic — at the training school and a half dozen girls in the Pueblo Unit, who need daily therapeutic supports and supervision, the report says. The average stay is about six months and about 250 children cycle through the facilities each year.

Changes in the works

The report says the state Department of Children and Families “has declined to investigate several allegations of abuse and neglect of children confined in the facility,” which also has faulty auditing and inadequate use of incident data. There are blind spots in rooms, where facility staff cannot view the children.

The report calls for immediate improvement of safety problems, better suicide-prevention protocols, more access to mental health treatment and the end of isolation as a form of punishment.

DCF, led for the last five years by Commissioner Joette Katz of Fairfield, said Wednesday some of the recommendations are already in the works.

“As always, the priority of DCF remains the well-being of the children in our care,” the agency said in a statement. “We have had a great degree of success and have made progress over the last five years, but we know there is still more work to be done to make sure every child in our care gets the service they need.”

Mark Bergman, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s communications director, said Wednesday that the governor and his staff are reviewing the report.

“DCF already announced they are taking proactive steps to address the problems found in the report and will determine whether additional steps are needed to be taken to address the problems in the report,” he said. “Since taking over at DCF, Commissioner Katz has worked to reduce the number of children in these facilities and continues to make progress on that front every year.”